Unify Corp

Unify Corp. said Monday it will restate earnings for fiscal 2000 and possibly some of 1999 and placed two top executives on leave, after the maker of electronic-commerce software found revenue was improperly stated. Unify also said earnings for the fiscal first quarter ended Monday will miss analyst expectations of 9 cents a share. The San Jose-based company's audit committee of directors hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to help with its investigation.

Unify Corp. said Monday it will restate earnings for fiscal 2000 and possibly some of 1999 and placed two top executives on leave, after the maker of electronic-commerce software found revenue was improperly stated. Unify also said earnings for the fiscal first quarter ended Monday will miss analyst expectations of 9 cents a share. The San Jose-based company's audit committee of directors hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to help with its investigation.

The wave of accounting scandals sweeping corporate America claimed a Silicon Valley victim Friday when a small maker of specialty software fired its chief executive and warned investors not to rely on its past financial statements. Shares of HPL Technologies Inc. of San Jose plummeted as much as 71% to $4 on Nasdaq before the market halted trading and demanded more information from the company.

In a show of force by the federal government against Silicon Valley, top executives from three Bay Area software companies were charged with accounting fraud Monday. Managers at two of the firms were charged criminally as well. The charges allege that five executives at Quintus Corp., Unify Corp. and Legato Systems Inc. separately engaged in a laundry list of illegal practices that wildly inflated revenue during the technology boom.

Like newborn calves on wobbly legs, companies selling stock to the public for the first time often need plenty of help from their investment bankers to get up and running as publicly traded entities. Yet in a hot stock market, an increasing number of companies aren't getting the support they need once their initial public offerings of stock are completed, some market experts say.

Known for decades as a hotbed of technological innovation, Silicon Valley in recent years has been nearly as inventive when it comes to keeping the books. During the dot-com boom, pro forma earnings, entangling company alliances, revenue by barter, and stock options by the boatload were all part of the valley's standard operating procedure before they spread to the likes of WorldCom Inc., Enron Corp. and Global Crossing Ltd.